memoirs of aly (the way i see it).

Tag Archives: love

Joel Osteen, in one of his sermons, gave an illustration of how our flawed humanity makes us try to avenge ourselves, though we all desire to be forgiven when we falter. He talked about a woman who had died and gone to heaven. When she got to the golden gates, St. Peter asked her to spell a word so she could get in.

“What word?” She asked.

“Any word you choose”, Peter replied.

“LOVE,” the woman said, before going ahead to spell. “L.O.V.E.”

With that, St. Peter opened the gates and allowed her to get in. Needless to say, she was beside herself with joy. She’d made it to heaven. Moments later, he asked her to stand in for him for only a short while. Dutifully, she agreed.

While the woman was manning the golden gates, her ex approached her. “What happened?” She asked.

“I had a heart attack”. He answered. “So, I’m I in heaven already?”

Begrudgingly, she said, “Not yet. First you have to spell a word.” She went on to give him a very hard word to spell, just so he she could deny him the chance to get to heaven. If we had that chance to condemn people to eternal damnation, how many of our foes would we sentence to hades?

Biblically, that illustration resonates with the story of the unforgiving servant in Matthew 18: 21-35. Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, if my brother keeps on sinning against me, how many times should I forgive him? Seven times?”

Jesus answered him, “No, not seven… but, seventy times seven. Because the kingdom of heaven is like this. Once there was a king who decided to check on his servants’ accounts. He had just began to do so when one of them who owed him millions of dollars was brought in. The servant didn’t have enough to pay his debt, so the king ordered him to be sold as a slave with his wife and children, and all that he had in order to pay his debt.

The servant fell on his knees before the king. ‘Be patient with me, he begged, and I will pay you everything!” The king felt sorry for him and he forgave him all his debt and let him go. The man went out and met one of his fellow servants who owed him a few dollars. He grabbed him and started choking him. ‘Pay back what you owe me’, he said.

His fellow servant fell down and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back’. But he refused; instead he had him thrown in jail until he should pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were very upset and went to the king and told him everything. So he called the servant in. ‘You worthless slave!’ He said. ‘I forgave you the whole amount you owed me, just because you asked me to. You should have had mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you’. The king was very angry, and he sent the servant to jail to be punished until he should pay back the whole amount.”

And Jesus concluded, “That is how my Father in heaven will treat every one of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”

In reality, most of the time we act like the unforgiving servant; we desire to be forgiven, but are so reluctant to forgive those who wrong us. It is that behaviour that our Lord condemns. When He taught his disciples how to say the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6: 9-13), He still emphasised on that ‘thorny’ aspect of forgiveness. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…”

Furthermore, in Matthew 6: 14-15 He says, “If you forgive others, the wrongs they have done to you, your Father in heaven will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive the wrongs you have done.

In roughly four weeks, we’ll be celebrating Christmas and a week after that, we’ll be ushering in a new year. November is almost ending and that means this year is pretty much over. Many things have happened; we’ve been wronged by people, and we’ve also wronged others. As this year draws to a close, it is imperative that we start mending fences…

We need to make peace with those who have stepped on our toes, or with those whose toes we’ve stepped on. I doubt anyone would want any differences they might have had with others to spill over to next year. Personally, I don’t… Let’s forgive… Every time I’m watching news I see so many atrocious things happening across the globe.

One party strikes, and the other retaliates in an attempt to avenge itself… the effect of this is loss of innocent lives and the destruction of property. Earlier this year, I was watching the news where President Trump proposed the reintroduction of waterboarding –an outlawed torture tactic of interrogation- as a form of countering terrorism. He said that with respect to terrorism, he would fight fire with fire.

In my very humble opinion, fire can’t put out fire. And you know how that saying goes, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.” Unfortunately, in most cases, this is the approach we use to deal with those who offend us. We come out guns blazing so at the end of the day we leave things worse than they were.

From my experience, forgiving is very difficult, especially if there was searing pain occasioned by the transgression. However, Jesus is calling on us to forgive… it is not easy, but it is the right thing to do… and right now, what the world needs is tonnes and tonnes of forgiveness, as this will create room for peace, love and unity to thrive. What we need to remember is that love heals… and there can be no love, without forgiveness.

Some people are clearly unmoved by children’s sentiments and if you ask me, it’s pretty unwise of a grown up to take offence when a child makes an innocent comment. Dad’s like that. He forgets that it’s commonly said, ‘if someone wants a really genuine answer or opinion on something, they should try picking a child’s mind’. They are honest, because they see the world through pure eyes; their emotions haven’t been coloured by biases yet.

They don’t see colour, or different religions… It’s no wonder Jesus said, that anyone who wants to get to heaven should be like a child. That said, dad didn’t dig deep into his conscience to see where he was erring as a parent. Instead, he felt comfortable telling himself all these years that my small sis was at fault for telling mom we should find a new dad.

There’s also a grudge he harbours against me because years ago, when I was only two years old, I ‘rejected’ him. As it is, my parents had parted ways when I was about six months old. Dad’s mom had been pressuring him to leave mom and find a girl from a wealthy family and somehow he had heeded to his mom’s advice.

For more than a year they were separated, so while I was growing up, I didn’t know dad. Eventually, he decided to get back with mom and when he came for us, I didn’t recognise him. So I ran. That precisely, was what he accuses me off. That I ran away from him, instead of running into his embrace. Now that I have an idea of how dad’s mind works, I try not to let that incident bother me.

When Saturday came, he left. I’m not sure whether he left for his brother’s, or he travelled back to his other house so he could prepare for work. Given that he’d gone back on a Saturday, it wasn’t hard to tell he couldn’t stand our presence.

Midweek, he sent mom some money. He didn’t call though. After assessing the situation, I told mom it would be better if she gave him back the keys; not because he deserved it, but because we should let nature take its course. We have tried our best. As it is, we can’t force him to do anything he doesn’t want to do. If ever he changes for the better, hopefully he will, it will have to come from his heart. In the meantime we’ll just leave everything to God.

Earlier today, mom gave him back the keys. He was ecstatic. He even said he was going to church. He asked me if I needed a lift and I told him I’d already attended mass. He left. However, I wasn’t fully convinced he’d gone to church because the mass he purported to attend was half way through and the other would be starting in an hour’s time. I figured time would tell.

About two hours later, he came back. Mom asked him how mass was and he said he wasn’t from church. I felt disappointed he hadn’t been there but I also appreciated that he didn’t lie about it. Lately he’s become a pathological liar; guess that’s a characteristic of people getting into an advanced stage of drug addiction. His alcohol breath was a clear indication of where he’d been.

Five minutes later, he left again. Turns out he’d only come back for more money. As my big sis was on her way to get some items from some nearby supermarket, he offered to give her a lift and as she had spent the entire night up, working on a client’s research-related report, she just agreed.

While he was driving, he told her he was going to sell the car because he couldn’t use it when he wanted to see his mother. That admission rubbed me off the wrong way. I know, while he’s so fond of his mother, I can’t say the same of us. He treats us like we’re an obstacle; the greatest setback in his life.

A few days ago, I just found myself wondering why God would give an irresponsible man such as him a family to take care of, yet he seems so detached. As a brother and son, he may have been perfect but the way I see it, he just wasn’t cut out for married life. He seems to have picked the wrong vocation because as a husband and father he’s performed so poorly.

The only thing that gives me hope is the fact that God took a chance on him. So maybe there’s something worth saving in him after all. Only time will tell.

The entire week he didn’t call and he refused to pick up calls. Since he comes home on Fridays, we waited to see how he would handle that sticky situation. Eventually the week ended and as was expected, he called mom to tell her he was coming home and he wanted to find the car keys in their usual place. From what I gathered, he practically barked the order over the phone.

When he got home, he found my small sis and I. We didn’t have classes that day. First thing he did, he asked for the car keys. It didn’t escape my attention that he had alcohol breath on a Friday afternoon, meaning he’d imbibed before making his way home.

We told him we didn’t know where the keys were. Disappointingly, he dialled his brother and I must say I felt ashamed as I watched, and listened to him pouring out his heart to him about how we had hid his keys. According to him, we were colluding with our mother… which wasn’t entirely false. He went on to say some things I would have preferred remained unsaid since those are essentially family ‘secrets’; and all these he did, thinking we would be intimidated into giving him back the keys.

I couldn’t help but wonder, what authority he thought his brother had over us. He’s never come through for us when we’re in dire need of some assistance. Worse still, the last time he visited us while in the company of his mom and siblings, they tried to show mom how bad she was for dad and he (dad) blatantly took their side. Because of that and other unfortunate incidents, I do not feel his authority is binding on us. If at all he has any, it would only be persuasive.

As a daughter, I must admit I felt disappointed and ashamed. Disappointed that my old man was too blind to notice obvious things; that there are issues in our family which need to be addressed and it won’t be an outsider addressing them; and ashamed that by implication, he was giving up his ‘man card’. Because he was indirectly creating the impression he is not strong enough to handle his wife and kids, so only his brother could.

When he was done, he said he was leaving and was never going to come back. That again, he thought would function as a threat, which obviously didn’t serve the intended purpose. Shortly after, he left. Of the things that really got me so worked up was the fact that he didn’t care to ask how we’d been doing since he’d been gone, given that he knew mom had told him we were experiencing some serious financial challenges. All he cared about was his mother. The rest of us could go to hell.

Later in the evening, his brother called mom. He didn’t tell her why he was calling and only said he was inviting her to join them in some trip they had the next day. The one that had dad taking an early off on a Friday. Courteously she refused because it was on such short notice. Even he, was surprised dad hadn’t told us in the least that there was a family event; not that we would have attended anyway.

Mom asked him if there was anything else he wanted to tell her and he said there wasn’t so she just told him she knew he wanted to ask about the keys. She explained to him why she had taken them and unexpectedly, he actually understood why she had done it. He even asked if dad was still going to church. It wasn’t hard to tell he was also concerned about his brother’s behaviour. She also told him she wouldn’t be giving dad back the keys until the underlying issues were resolved.

When dad came home from the bar later, he said he was washing his hands off of us. He didn’t want anything to do with us. I had trouble understanding where he had prioritised us as his family, seeing as he was readily going out on a limb for his extended family, yet when it came to us, he seemed unperturbed.

The other day he was drunk, he got cross with my small sis, apparently for something she did ages ago, when she was around six. “You asked your mother if you could go find a new dad,” he scoffed, “maybe it’s time you did. Go find yourself another dad”.

That got me really concerned. All these years, I never knew he heard when my small sis had said that. Clearly she hadn’t said it out of pride, or anger. It was an innocent child speaking her mind out as a result of the misery our own father was putting us through.

So why would he in his right mind, not take a moment to ponder over that? Why would an innocent six year old say that of her dad? Personally I would freak out if God-forbid, I heard my children saying they wanted another mom.

Ever bumped into someone and after watching them for a while, the impression you formed of them was, “This one wasn’t definitely cut out for a family life?” That might be a sad analysis of an individual I know, but sometimes circumstances might have someone reaching that conclusion. Here’s my own personal example:

Last week, I found myself analysing the life I’ve lived, and especially the things I know about my dear dad. And oddly, I just reached one conclusion: not every man was cut out to be a family man; to be someone’s husband, or dad.

He seems to have been unaware of his responsibilities as a family man from the get go. I have discussed my dad in so many of my posts that everyone who reads them ardently has an almost perfect image of who he is, based on how I portray him.

What had me reaching this weird conclusion was a series of events that have happened at various points in our lives, the most recent being last week. As I had mentioned in the previous post, dad’s mom has been unwell for a while, and most of that I attribute to old age.

After the fuss I’d mentioned in the particular post about the issues dad and his siblings had when they were trying to decide who among them was best suited to take their ailing mom in, they finally reached an agreement.

Their brother, who’s deemed the most affluent of them all took the onus; the fact that he had married a woman his mom didn’t want notwithstanding. It had been a really stressful issue for them because each sibling seemed to have a genuine concern as to why they couldn’t let the family’s matriarch into their homes; the past played a major role in this- she burned so many bridges in her ‘halcyon’ days.

When she eventually moved in, the siblings started visiting her regularly since she was close to them and it was easier that way; at least no one would have to worry about stirring up trouble in their house by taking her in. For starters, she and her oldest daughter-in-law don’t see eye to eye, so that household was off limits. And ours… that’s a belaboured account.

About three weeks ago, dad called me on a Saturday afternoon. He wanted to know when we were planning on visiting his mom. Given the very wanting relationship we have with her, we were obviously reluctant about it.

Again, I’ve mentioned in previous posts that family gatherings with dad’s family don’t quite make me ecstatic because those people have the potential to break someone down…and I mean really. That’s the one event you attend and by the time you leave, all you want is to never attend social gatherings again. They’re too competitive; always focusing on tearing someone down so they can feel good about themselves.

Dad sensing my reluctance, threatened he was going to tell on us to his family if we didn’t go. So I just wondered why he would use such a card, knowing how ‘unmoved’ we are by his family. Based on the poor relationship we have, it just never feels like we owe them any explanations. Anything we do for/with them, we do out of goodwill. Apparently he’s never figured that out.

After deliberating with my sisters, we reached a consensus; we’d be visiting her the next day after church. She is aging, and in spite of the way she’s treated us in the past we felt it was good to just check on her. Two wrongs don’t make a right after all. So the next day we honoured our promise.

Last Saturday but one mom needed some urgent cash, plus we needed to restock our pantry since we were running low on food supplies. She asked dad for some because he did have. She had seen it. He refused, completely. So mom was just stressed the entire weekend.

A few days before then, she had taken his car keys. This she’d done in the hope that it would hamper his drinking ways, seeing as he seems to be bonding with the bottle more with each passing day. It even gets worse when he drives to some nearby bars because he could spend an entire night out then come home close to noon. Like he did this past Friday. The risks involved here are numerous.

Neighbours complain he’s drunk and disorderly, and obviously when he gets home in that state, basic parking becomes a problem. It’s even horrifying thinking about all the accidents he could cause when drunk driving.

Lately he’s been spending all his weekends at his brother’s, where his mom is; however, that weekend he didn’t go since mom refused to give him back the keys. He slept on the couch the entire day; didn’t even talk to anyone. I felt he was behaving like a petulant child. Early Sunday morning he left the city so he could be ready for work by Monday.

A week ago my big sis had a dental surgery. Dad drove her to the hospital, albeit reluctantly. He didn’t know what went in there but mom, who was with her the entire time came home distraught. She likened her experience to what Mother Mary must have gone through when she saw Jesus being tortured during His Passion; a mother’s pain when she sees her child suffering and can do nada about it.

When dad travelled out of town for work, he left her on an entirely liquid diet and he never called even once to find out how she was doing. He had her cancel her review appointment, knowing that the particular surgeon is only available once a week, so now she’s waiting for tomorrow’s appointment, which he still intimated she should cancel. All this while I’ve been thinking, if he cared even the slightest bit, he would have feigned some concern. That way we would never have known how much he detests us.

In very blunt words, dad has been the bane of our lives. The way I see it, he hates to see us happy. When he gets the impression we’re happy he does something to sabotage it. So if someone asked how it feels to have a father, I may not have anything positive to say about it.

Last Saturday he came home drunk as usual, and started complaining to mom how my small sis had told him he wasn’t her father.

“Mom, let’s find another dad,” he said, mimicking my small sister’s voice when she was younger. I was actually surprised because I didn’t know he had heard that years ago. Those are words my small sis said when she was around five, and now it’s years later. When she said that, she did it innocently because she had seen how happy other kids looked when they were with their dads, yet with us, the only thing we felt was misery.

He let us go hungry when he had money stashed in his bank account; spent nights outside drinking away… he made us know how it feels to live in a house where parents fight, physically, and as mom was the weaker of the two she always ended up hurt.

When I heard him mimicking my sister, I couldn’t help but think, if he heard that years ago, how come he never made an attempt to change? A good parent would have been concerned why their five year old daughter was saying such a thing. Instead, he only became more brutal, as if trying to emphasize the point. He didn’t seem to care what we felt/thought about him.

“Go find yourselves another dad,” he barked. “You think dads are bought in the supermarket. I’m leaving,” he told mom before walking out to go back to the bar, even though he was already drunk. “Let me know when you find another dad.” With that he left, and he came back the next day.

I know this might sound wrong, but honestly, I have more than enough reasons to believe that there are children who grew up fatherless, for whatever reasons, and have led happier lives than my sisters and I. Every time I picture myself raising my children in a home like the one I’ve grown up in-God forbid-I shiver, and I usually find myself thinking that it’s better to not have a family in the first place, because reliving this would be an absolute nightmare. I wouldn’t even imagine putting my kids through what I’ve been through myself.

When I was a child, I had a dream; that my dad would change and be a better man. Now I’m all grown up and almost moving out, and that dream didn’t come true. Sometimes, no, most of the times I fear that once I walk out of that door, I’ll lose his number and sever all possible ties I have with him. I’m afraid that one of the things I desperately want is to change my surname, because it constantly reminds me that he is my father.

Point is, I did grow up with my father. But if that has added any value to my life? I’m not sure. All I know is, I don’t want to be anything like him. When I get my own adorable children, God willing, I want to be everything he’s not; loving, caring, forgiving, empathetic…

There may be someone ‘fatherless’ out there who feels their lives would have turned out better if they had a dad; but take it from me; the grass is not always greener on the other side. For all I know, there are many children who grew up not knowing their fathers but who had very happy childhoods. Because at the end of the day it’s not about someone merely associating themselves with a father figure, but about what role that ‘figure’ plays in someone’s life. To some they are a blessing; and to others a curse. That’s just how life is.

Fatherless child. Ever wondered who’s a fatherless child? I have a few ideas: it could be a child whose father is already dead; or it could be a child whose mother had more than one lover so she might not be able to tell who exactly is the baby’s father; it could also be a woman who had to raise a child alone because the father abandoned them; or it could be a child who knows the dad but he’s ever absent so the child considers him/herself fatherless.

I’m not oblivious to the fact that there may be other definitions of a fatherless child, but for the purposes of this post, discussion if you’d rather, I’ll limit myself to the aforementioned options since those are the ones I’m truly conversant with.

This post was prompted by very weird happenings; and I say weird, for lack of a better word. First of all, there’s this lady who works with mom. She has a three year old cousin whom she takes to mom’s beauty salon. So a few weeks ago mom playfully called him by his three names; the last being his surname.

Innocently, the kid told mom he wasn’t going by that surname anymore, and naturally she got curious. “My mom told me that one left us,” he answered innocently, when mom sought to find out why he was denouncing his surname.

“And the one you live with?” Mom asked since she knows the kid’s dad; or at least she thought she did.

“That’s not my real dad, but he lives with us.”

“D’you call him dad?” Mom pried.

“I just call him by his name,” he answered.

In my opinion, I felt the boy was too young for his mom to be telling him such complex matters but then again, even if she didn’t, someone else (think a nosy relative/neighbour) would beat her to the punch at some point. Anyways, that gave me the impression the boy already knew the man they live with is not his dad and that his actual dad deserted him and his mother. I couldn’t help wondering what would happen when later in future he meets him, knowing what he does now.

Then coincidentally, when I was coming home from court last Friday I overheard some neighbours’ kids talking. From my estimation they’re about three years old because they all recently joined kindergarten.

“Timmy says he doesn’t have a dad,” the only girl in that group of five children said. Timmy was also in that group, just listening silently.

“I have a dad,” another one said.

“Every child has a father and a mother,” the girl added confidently.

“But Chad says he’s the only one who has a mother and a father,” another one added. Chad wasn’t in the group with them but I know him and he’s a somewhat bratty kid who’s been mollycoddled by his parents a lot because he’s the last of three sons; so I kinda figured he had said that braggingly. I wouldn’t blame him though; his family emits the happy, perfect family vibes, unlike mine.

By the time I passed them, they were still debating about their friend Timmy being fatherless and whether it’s even possible for someone to be without a father. I pitied Timmy because I’ve heard of kids being bullied by others because they don’t have fathers. Thankfully those ones were not trying to make him feel bad about his fatherless condition.

Then in another totally unrelated instance, my small sis was arguing with dad. It wasn’t an argument per se. It was just dad doing all the talking while she on the other hand tried to block him out so she could finish fixing her breakfast.

He came home drunk in the morning after spending an entire night out club hopping and he found her in the kitchen. Mom had taken the car keys away because he always goes out to drink and by the time he comes back home he’s usually too drunk to park it.

Since he didn’t know who had taken the car keys and mom had already left the house, he assumed it was me or my sisters. When he started with his drunken rumblings, insulting us, my small sis just lost her cool and told him, he’d never been a father to her.

I understood where she was coming from; we’ve lived with him all our lives, but we couldn’t feel more fatherless. He’s been emotionally unavailable all through and never once has he tried to make up for the hurt he’s caused us. So even though we carry his name everywhere we go, we know it’s only a name.

When I was a child the one thing I hated most on TV was news. I hated news with a passion. If by bad luck I found myself watching news and was in a situation where I couldn’t leave the room, I would cover my ears with my hands, just so I wouldn’t hear what was being read out. Yeah, it was that bad. But it wasn’t difficult to figure why I felt that way about news; I’ve never liked anything which revolves around horror and on a typical day, the things one hears on the news are about accidents, bombings, political wars, starvation and such horrid stuff.

Thankfully, as I was growing up, my attitude towards news changed gradually as I developed a liking for matters politics. So now I can’t say I hate news. However, I’m sure if I was a child at the moment, I would possibly hate news more than I even did before. Reason being, it’s too depressing watching news.

Wednesday for instance, I woke up to the news of the France church attack in St. –Étienne-Du-Rouvray, where an 85 year old priest was killed. The attack was allegedly carried out by two radical Islamists, one of whom was identified as a 19-year old man.

Not too long ago, there was the Turkey airport attack, and the other attack in Nice, France, where a Tunisian-born French national mowed through a crowd of people in a truck, zig-zagging past the masses and shooting to maximize the number of deaths. In that incident, at least 84 people were killed, among them children. An eye-witness said bodies were just falling like bowling pins. It was gut-wrenching.

Following the inhumane attack in Normandy, the Pope expressed pain and horror at such callousness, where a priest was brutally murdered in his own church. He said the world was at war, but it wasn’t religious.

I can’t begin to explain what I felt when I heard of the attack. It’s impossible to comprehend why two human beings, in their right minds would think of killing a priest. If a man of God, standing before a sacred altar can’t be deemed as an innocent, then life has lost meaning; the world is indeed coming to an end.

I’ve tried to understand why innocent people are being killed like worthless bugs, and there’s no reason in the world that could possibly make me see the sense in such wanton murders. Guys who knew the 19-year old said he always had sadistic ideas, which they said were based on wrong quotations of the Quran and each time they would try to talk him out of it.

What I refuse to understand, is how someone would boldly, and unprovoked, take innocent lives in the name of God/religion. One thing I’m pretty sure of is that God wouldn’t be in favour of such ruthless killings. If the same God this attackers claim to kill in the name of, is the same one the rest of the Muslim population serves, then why are they against it? Why do Muslim clerics condemn it? Isn’t this a clear indication to these attackers that what they’re doing is absolutely wrong?

Reports say that the Muslim community mourned in the wake of the Normandy attack. Doesn’t this say something to those few who have made it their business to go killing innocent people? Islam is a beautiful religion. I have many friends who are Muslims and they are wonderful people. So why would a few misguided individuals want to sully that?

When I heard of the attack, I was like, “Not again!” My heart bled; for the victims and for the Muslim population. For the former because of the loss of life, and for the trauma the survivors must have suffered; and for the latter, because of how their religion keeps being painted in such bad light.

Pope Francis said the world was at war, but it wasn’t a religious one and I agree with him. I reckoned, every religion has a few ‘bad apples’; individuals who can’t help but create a bad image for that particular religion. So does that justify the rest of the world to judge a religion harshly because of those misguided few? I would think not.

In my case for instance, I would really hate it if someone thought my church was full of paedophiles because a few priests have been accused of molesting children. In that same light, it wouldn’t be fair to label all Muslims terrorists because of the few who go about perpetuating cold-blooded killings in the name of Islam; because one thing I’ve gathered is that Islam explicitly condemns terrorism. In any case, Islam respects all human beings and faiths.

What I’m trying to get at is simple; there are too many problems globally. It would be calamitous, if God-forbid, we converted them into a religious war. There are diverse religions in the world, each with its own beliefs and practices. Instead of letting those differences divide us, we should embrace them and respect them, appreciating that it’s those same differences which make us unique. The world would be such a boring place if we were all alike, don’t you think?

The way I see it, instead of shunning our neighbours because they don’t share the same beliefs we do, we should respect them; and if there are issues in conflict, the best way to solve them would be to do a little research so we can get enlightened. That way, we won’t harbour unfounded suspicions, which are merely based on ignorant hearsay.

God’s greatest command to mankind is to love; and it’s not hard to understand why. Love is that magical cord, which binds us all together, irrespective of our numerous differences. Now, more than ever before, the world needs love, not war.